Friday, July 13, 2012

I was having a chat with Friend Ian and Friend Zak about Dungeons &
Dragons today. Mostly, we were looking at how to make a better D&D, which
seems like a pretty difficult thing to do. See, they made a pretty great D&D
when they put together Third Edition. While it wasn’t elegant and seemed to lack
focus, the game was well loved for its incredible flexibility, it’s adherence to
the game’s roots, the much streamlined system (when compared to Second Edition),
and a community-first approach (the OGL in specific) that really made the game
shine.

One of the things I’ve been talking about a lot lately is tech constriction.
Basically, it works like this: when White Wolf created Vampire: The Masquerade,
they had a really cool goal – “Make a story-based horror role-playing game” –
but they didn’t have the technology they needed to make that goal a reality. You
see this a lot in early attempts at narrative-heavy role-playing games, with my
favourite example being Skyrealms of Jorune. They did the best they could with
what they had, and what they managed to squeeze from the systems of the time was
pretty spectacular. It didn’t really lend itself to story-telling horror, but it
did provide a cool avenue for Awesomer than Thou “superheroes with fangs”
role-playing, and a lot of people really dug on that.

When a bunch of years passed, and it was time to look at relaunching the
game, the technology available to the designers was significantly advanced to be
able to handle more narrative games. But, rather than build a game that
leveraged that new tech, they built a game that was a lot like the first version
with some streamlining and some clever twists.

No one liked it.

Now, I personally prefer the New World of Darkness to the Old World of
Darkness. But I don’t look at a game with the same eyes that most folk do. I
look at games with the eyes of a designer and a retailer, and I can really
appreciate the direction they were attempting to drive their line. But it didn’t
work for most of the fans of the original game because it was “too different.”
Imagine the shitstorm that would have come if they’d actually scrapped their
whole system and designed one that was actually well-built for telling stories
of personal horror.

This is tech constriction. When you publish a popular role-playing game,
there is an expectation that future editions of the game are going to be very
similar to that game. And that’s fine, it’s an understandable expectation to
have, but it really ties designers hands when building a new edition of a game.
If you don’t innovate, the game becomes stagnant and no one appreciates the new
edition. If you innovate too much, it doesn’t “feel” like the previous editions
of the game, and people get upset at having their expectations dashed.

Fourth Edition D&D suffered from innovating too much. The game took a new
and unexpected direction, moving from comfortable simulation-heavy role-playing
into a much more game-centric focus, and that move was jarring to a lot of
people. I thought it was a brilliant move myself, because Wizards of the Coast
has already exemplified simulation-centric play with Third Edition, and indie
games have filled the niche for narrative games to the brim. Still, it wasn’t
enough like previous editions of the game, and people railed against that.

So what’s the answer? How do you build a better edition of Dungeons &
Dragons? How do you build a version of D&D that holds true to everything
D&D is about, how do you utilize new technology without alienating your core
audience?

In Friend Ian’s opinion, the solution is to exemplify the old tech, to give
players a reason to love the old busted tech. The comparison he made is that,
right now, D&D is a clunky jalopy held together with tape and hope, but what
it needs to be is the shiny, perfectly restored classic custom. The 1967
Cadillac Eldorado. The 1971 Barracuda. Shine the old rules up, make them really
count, and focus on those things that make D&D what it is.

Levels

Most modern role-playing games aren’t using levels as an advancement system.
The vast, overwhelming majority of games designed in the past ten years are
designed with point-allocation systems, or a system by which use directly
affects advancement. Some games, notably Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, use
parallel advancement, by which I mean the character does not become
statistically better, but instead grows in personality and that new personality
changes how the player will play their character. (If you haven’t read Do:
Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, I suggest you go buy it immediately, because it’s
incredible).
Levels are archaic and they tend to make about as much sense as Save vs.
Magic Wand. Why does gaining X amount of experience make me universally better
at everything I’m good at? Wouldn’t the skills I’m not using fall behind those
I’m exercising constantly?

But that’s part of this exercise, right? Making all that is old new again.
How do you make levels matter more? The team at D&D next have flattened the
curve, making each level less statistically important while opening new choices
and options for your character. We’re still not really sure what that looks
like, exactly, but it’s probably a strong step in the right direction. I need a
reason to want to be level 13 as opposed to level 12. So give me those reasons.
Give me something at every level that makes me go “What? Really?
Really?” Give my fighter a castle at level 10. Let my warlord field
armies at level 6. If my mage can’t lift an island out of the sea and build a
tower on it at level 12, there’s no reason to be a 12th level wizard.

Now, these are obviously just spitballing, but seriously, if you have to do
levels, and each level is supposed to be an achievement, you need to make every
level a really big deal, and make them something I want to work towards. And
that doesn’t just mean cool new attack powers. You need to build systems that
are going to make those levels sweet. Like I said, let the warlord field an
army, because at level 6 that’s something you seriously need to consider
occasionally. Don’t get me wrong, that should definitely cost something. You
shouldn’t be able to field an army just because these 13 orcs are kind of
fucking with your day without it costing you a small fortune. But we’ll get to
wealth in a minute.

Hit Points

Hit Points, even as the abstraction they’re made out to be, are sort of dumb.
Like many of the weirdest mechanics in role-playing, hit points are a holdover
from their wargaming roots, and in a larger-scale combat scenario, they make a
fine abstraction of a unit’s ability to take damage and continue to function. A
few people die, but it’s not enough to hinder performance. A whole bunch of
people die, and the unit dissolves into a scattered rag-tag barely capable of
hindering a healthy military force. Even in this case, I think it’s something of
a stretch, but if you’re talking large-scale, unless a general dies, your armies
should keep ticking away without too much difficulty if they take some
casualties.

As a measure of an individual’s health, hit points are utterly ridiculous.
Let me illustrate with an example. When you’re slicing something that you’re
about to cook, and you cut yourself, what’s the first thing you do? If you’re
not acting like a huge tough-person, your reaction is very likely “stop
everything you’re doing, cover the wound, swear a lot.” This is a normal reflex,
and everyone does it (unless they’ve been trained not to, and even then, if
you’re not in a scenario where the training fits, you’re still probably going to
jump, cover and grumble). This is a shock reflex. In small amounts, shock will
keep you alive. In a rough situation, it can kill you.

Another illustration! I was watching a great video of a Krav Maga instructor
talking about self-defence. I don’t remember much of the video, but there was
one thing that really stuck out for me. “No matter how well trained you are, no
matter how many martial arts you learn, a fifteen year old with a knife can kill
you.” This is a paraphrase, of course, and I have no idea who the original
instructor was, but it’s a really interesting point when talking about how much
damage a human body can take before it dies.

A lot. And not much at all.

You’d be surprised what you can live through, and you’d be equally surprised
what can kill you. People have survived falling a thousand feet without a
parachute. People have survived being shot a dozen times. People have survived
horrifying animal attacks and stabbings and hangings and getting hit by
lightning three times. And a fifteen year old with a knife can kill you.

So how do you make hit points cool? How do you make hit points jump out at me
and scream that they need to be a part of a game’s design? Well, D&D Fourth
Edition did some things very right with hit points, but didn’t quite hit the
mark. First of all, Fourth Edition gave you a lot of hit points
compared to other games, because you’re supposed to be a badass. Second, the
minion rule was a brilliant stroke that told a very simple story: minions are
unimportant; they are mooks that you don’t need to worry about, and shouldn’t
feel bad killing; and by extension, the player characters are goddamned heroes
because they take a beating and don’t die like normal people.

Hit points have been sold, typically, as an abstraction for health, and I
think that’s the wrong track. They’re not an abstraction for health, they’re not
an abstraction for ducking and dodging and defending yourself and getting worn
down (because if that were the case, they would have an affect on your abilities
as they depleted). They should be an abstraction of how badass you are. When you
take a hit point of damage, you get a wicked Bruce Willis cut on your chin. A
single stream of blood runs across your forehead. Your armour dents, your sword
chips, you get that single line of red cut across your cheek that is a dire
insult to your honour and must be addressed.

If you want to make hit points matter, it’s imperative to make them an
important part of the game by utilizing them in both flavour and mechanics.
Wizards came close to this with the idea of marking a “bloodied” value, a
mechanical middle-point to your hit points. Where I think they failed in this
endeavour is making the bloodied value really mean something. As it currently
sits, being bloodied is something you complain about to your healer and your
healer zaps you with some healing. Being damaged is, at current, universally
bad. This leads to a proliferation of healers and the horrible “five minute work
week” that Game Masters have to constantly struggle against.

I want fighters to be rewarded for getting damaged. I want to see paladins
and warlords at the hottest when they’re cut up and bruised. I want to see
player characters getting pushed to the line and then coming back in a big way.
Incentivize getting hurt. Make me want to jump into the fray and get
bashed around a little, because I’m at my strongest when I’ve been tossed around
a little. Add another tier of damage (Broken, 1/4 total hit points) that unlocks
the big moves, the big bonuses, and huge damage.

And reverse that for wizards and sorcerers and warlocks and the like. They
don’t want to get hurt, they’re not jumping into frays, they need to be
protected while they’re slinging their spells or those spells are going to be
less effective at Bloodied and catastrophically weak at Broken. It’s not easy to
concentrate when you’re bleeding out. We’ll talk more about that when we get to
classes.

Gold and Wealth

Once upon a time, you got an experience point for every single gold piece you
acquired. Seriously. It was a big deal to find a dragon’s hoard, because that
meant you were probably going to hit your next level (not that levels really
meant anything beyond an achievement unlocking; see above). Gold mattered to the
mechanics of the game in a very real way, and that meant that adding up all of
your gold pieces was actually sort of fun.
Most modern role-playing games have done away with recording every penny on
your character sheet.

More popular in the current stretch of games is an
abstracted “resources” or “wealth” stat that you can use to purchase items you
want or need. A few games still keep track of individual credits (Shadowrun, for
instance), but if your character sheet has a “resources” score on it, the game
is probably new school.
Greed is huge in D&D. The First Edition cover is famously a pair of
adventurers prying a gem from the eye of a statue they probably shouldn’t be
fucking with. Adventurers are in the game for the gold and the experience. But
more recent editions of D&D have turned wealth into a way to get that magic
item you want than an ends unto itself.

I say, bring back the gold/experience track. Make people crave gold itself
because it makes you rich and helps you out mechanically at the same time. Add
your current gold pieces (not your silver, not your copper, not your electrum,
but your GOLD pieces) to your experience. Keep a separate track for experience
from gold and experience from adventuring, and add them up at the end of each
session.

Perhaps more importantly, change the economy of magic items. In specific,
take the gold piece cost off of them, because magic items should be damned near
priceless. No more the +1 sword, because that shit be whack, yo. More on that
when we discuss “equipment.” But, seriously, make it impossible to walk into Ye
Olde Magick Shoppe to buy a +2 dagger of slaying. Make buying magic items
difficult and incredibly expensive. Make buying potions difficult and incredibly
expensive. Make it clear that a peasant could never, with a thousand years of
toil and saving, afford a simple +1 ring of protection, because players will
think twice about dropping their experience count to buy one, and we want that
tension in the game.

Then make it matter in the flavour. I live in Canada, so I think I have a
better understanding of this problem than some of my southern
compatriots. We have yellow dollar coins in Canada. We call them loonies,
because we’re funny that way. The picture to the right is a stack of loonies.
That’s $17, which isn’t a ton of dough. Each coin is about an inch across. What
you’re looking at is a literal handful of money. You could fit seventeen dollars
more-or-less comfortably in a single hand. Now, for the sake of our discussion,
let’s say you and your crew take down a juvenile red dragon. Looking at the
D&D 3.5 stats, a juvenile red dragon is a CR 7 creature, and it usually has
three times the treasure of a normal creature of the same level. A normal
treasure at seventh level would be 1d12x100gp. I’m going to roll a d12 now. Came
up ten. A normal encounter would have 1000gp sitting here, but this is a dragon,
so it’s triple that at 3000 gold pieces.

That is 176 handfuls of coins. That’s actually more coins than I can imagine
with any sort of accuracy. And you’re going to stuff that into some sacks and
drag it home? Man, I’ve had a pocket full of loonies before, and it’s not
comfortable. Trying to drag home my share of thousands would make me a grumpy
dude.

Moreover, where the hell are you going to keep all of this money? You
can’t just carry it around, because it’s thousands of fucking gold pieces. You
have to keep it somewhere, and if a young dragon couldn’t guard it from four
asshats like your party, how are you going to make sure that the money stays
yours?

Alignment

I love the words “alignment system,” when applied to D&D, mostly because
it doesn’t really exist. Early on, it seemed like a good way to figure out whose
team everyone was on. Are you part of the chaos team or the order team? Good or
evil? I have a spell to find out for sure.

Later, it became a flavour point. A good character acts in different ways
than an evil character at least some of the time, and the guidelines set out in
the books tell you what sorts of things people in each alignment do. But boiling
complex ethical questions down to a nine point grid is always going to be
problematic. Moral relativism is entirely ignored for absolutism, which in
itself is problematic because the D&D morality system assumes that the
absolutes can be found in North American cultural values.

Democracy and personal freedom are not “good” in a society that values
adherence to a strict code of conduct and absolute loyalty to one’s liege lord.
Indeed, encouraging democratic rebellion eschews the divine right to rule
entirely and in such a society would be a heinously evil act of treason. But,
because we largely live in mostly democratic nations, we assume that democracy
is good and tyranny is evil.

Still, it’s a hallmark of the game, and one of its most clearly recognizable
symbols. There have been internet memes built around it. People like it. With
Fourth Edition D&D, it was made to matter even less than in Third, with
spells no longer affecting specific alignments and alignment restrictions being
removed from even the clearest example of them (a paladin can only be Lawful
Good). Fourth Edition also stripped the system of Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil,
assuming that Evil is the Lawful version and Good is of the Chaotic sort unless
otherwise specified. Where once there were some minor systematic overlaps in
alignment, there are almost none, now.

To make alignment important, to make it a focal point of the game’s system,
will require something of an overhaul of the way we look at alignments in
general. While I desperately hope we never see alignment restrictions ever again
(I mean, a paladin is just a warrior for the cause of a god, yeah? There are
evil gods. You don’t need a separate class for that.), I think that bringing
back alignment-specific effects would be a solid step in the right direction.
This should be especially true of the “holy” classes like clerics and paladins,
who should deal damage typed to their alignment. Demons should be forced to
occasionally take 10 points of “good damage,” while angels should eat “evil
damage” for dinner once in a while. In fact, the more closely related you are to
a specific alignment, the more damage you should take from its opposite. Make a
whole bunch of creatures that are vulnerable to Good Damage. Keep radiant and
necrotic damage, because both of those are awesome, but don’t use them in place
of damage.

Alignment specific bonuses should be applied to gear, as well. Magic the
Gathering has this shit locked down, because card colour is basically alignment.
One of the cycles from the newest core set gives a creature a strength and
toughness bonus for being the right alignment, and also provides an ability
typical to that colour’s effects. That’s cool business, and could easily the be
ported over to role-playing games.

For the record, Neutral shouldn’t get a damage type. It’s also the stupidest
of the alignments, and one of the few areas in which I agree with Kevin
Siembieda is that “selfish” is a much better description of that alignment set.

Vancian Magic

There are two things I hate about Vancian Magic. The first is the forgetting
of spells at inconvenient times (like right after I’ve cast the damned thing).
The second is the idea that the level of the spell is not the level of the
person casting it. Both of those problems got fixed in Fourth Edition, and it’s
one of the things people complain about the most readily. “My wizard is too
effective. He should be way more horrible than this,” say the grognards.

A lot of people have talked at length about Vancian Magic and why it’s good
and why it’s horrible. I’m not going to retrace over that conversation. Instead,
I’m going to try and find a way to make Vancian Magic the best magic it can be.

First of all, going back to levels a bit, if I’m going to lose my abilities
after I use them, those abilities are going to need to be really cool. And
they’re going to need to be way cooler at every new level. Now, when I say that
a spell needs to be cool, I’m not suggesting that it needs to do way more damage
or whatever, it just needs to do something that is awesomely flavourful and also
useful. Some damage-dealing spells are great, and you can’t build a Vancian
magic system without staples like Magic Missile or Fireball. But I need a reason
to cast spells that isn’t combat. Or if it is in combat, it shouldn’t be roughly
as effective as the ranger’s arrows. A mage’s spells need to do something weird
and cool. At first level, it’s not enough to just throw some force at a guy and
have him get knocked back a square. I want to throw a mystical orb of glowing
green power at him and have his face covered in three fighting squid for a turn.
At tenth level, I should be able to turn a castle into a peach that I can carry
around in my pocket for a day. At fifteenth level, I should be able to rearrange
continents into shapes that please me, and damn the ecological considerations.
At twentieth level, I should be able to carve my own face into the moon, where I
will smile upon those who make me happy and scowl angrily at those who’ve
wronged me. And my scowl should cause your genitals to turn into sea
anemones that whistle annoying songs all the time.

Seriously, the whole concept of magic in D&D needs an overhaul. Magic
shouldn’t be a tool, it should be fucking weird. It should do weird things more
often than it does Magic Missile. If you have to have fireballs, have those fire
balls carve the runes of my future into the bodies of my enemies, easily
readable by wise bison and children, but not by me. If you have to do
rope trick, have the portal cut a hole in the meat of the world where we will be
warm and safe, but marked forever by our crime (thank you to 7th Sea for that
one).

This is what magic is, it’s filled with strange flavour and weird concepts
that can’t possibly be replicated by current technology.

And it’s really time that wizards, sorcerers, warlocks et al get different
flavours of magic. When a wizard casts a spell, it’s refined, perfect, as
pristine in form as it is in function. It’s focused, simple, elegant, but lacks
power, flair, or pizazz. When a sorcerer casts a spell, it’s wild, weird,
doesn’t really know what it wants to be until it’s finished, and might not go
off properly at all. When a warlock or a cleric casts a spell, it’s not a spell
of his or her choosing. No, the choice is left to his or her benefactor, which
makes a warlock’s spellcasting effectively political.

Make magic cool and weird again. And build the powers of the people who use
it with some thought to what sort of magic they wield.

Classes

I like the freedom of a point-buy system, and I love the flavour that comes
pouring out of a lifepaths system like Burning Wheel. I absolutely adore the
Aspects of FATE and the similar traits of Dogs in the Vineyard. I don’t really
dig on classes all that much, because they restrict the focus of my character to
whatever settings were determined best by the folk who wrote the class. They
certainly have their uses, and they increase grokability in a big way, but what
they gain in recognition from the players is lost in a lack of flexibility and
real customization.

Classes in D&D need to be rethought from the ground up, I feel. Each
class needs to find a unique way to interact with each facet of the game.
Fighters need to fight, but they should also get better at fighting the more
beat up they get and they should get better at their skills while they’re in
combat and their equipment should be at its peak in the middle of a brawl. A
wizard casts spells, which is neat, but they’re not well suited to combat and
should do their best to stay away when the swords swing. They are, however,
incredibly useful in a library and their skills get much more relevant when they
have a rich pool of knowledge from which to draw. Their equipment works best in
universities and labs and their feats give them all sorts of bonuses to knowing
stuff. Thieves steal stuff, and sometimes that means getting your hands a little
dirty, but the less you’re noticed the better. They get better at fighting when
the chips are down, but they look their best when everything is going their way.
Their skills work best in silence and darkness; they don’t perform well under
bright lights, or when anyone has noticed them. They are incredibly useful in
cities and do their best work in dark alleys. These are simple things to talk
about, but making them matter in the course of play can be a lot more
challenging. Situational bonuses should be built into characters to exemplify
what it is they do, where they do it best, and how they get it done.

Make fighters better at what they do when they’ve had the crap kicked out of
them.
Make wizards better at what they do when they have some time to think and a
cup of tea,
Make thieves better at what they do when they’re on the rooftops and in the
alleys.
Make clerics better at what they do when they’re facing down the enemies of
their church.

Give people a situation in which they are better at doing the things they do,
and encourage players to work to those strengths. Reward your players for doing
things outside of combat that their characters are good at (except fighters,
because fighters excel at combat, hence the name). Build role-playing hooks into
your characters from the get-go. Build abilities that encourage non-combat
situations and enhance exploration. Instead of looking for four basic ideas of
what player characters do, look at what each class does, find a way for them to
excel at that thing in different circumstances, and build the class around that.
Let’s take a look at the fighter and the ranger, for instance.

The fighter fights. Fighters are at their best in combat. The fighter
gets better at things the more damage he or she has taken. The fighter’s skills
get better when in a fight. The fighter’s equipment thrives on combat and combat
situations. Fighters look their best when they’ve been beaten up.

The ranger hunts. Rangers are at their best in the forest. The ranger
gets better at things as he or she fells enemies. The ranger’s skills get better
after a fight. The ranger’s equipment thrives in the wilderness. Rangers look
their best when they’re travelling.

These are very different character builds for two martial style characters.
Neither is magical, both of them “fight,” but these are two completely different
sorts of characters who excel at very different things. The fighter doesn’t care
if he or she’s in a forest or a cave; he’s going to fight and fight well. The
ranger cares about where he or she is, but only cares about fights after the
fact. Building classes this way provides a lot of avenues for archetypes that
haven’t been explored a lot, and can help in finding the specific niches between
similar characters (wizards and sorcerers for instance).

The wizard casts spells. Wizards are at their best surrounded by books.
The wizard gets better at things as his or her resources improve. The wizard’s
skills get better while preparing to cast a spell. The wizard’s equipment
thrives in places of learning and knowledge. Wizards look their best when
well-rested.

The sorcerer casts spells. Sorcerers are at their best when celebrating.
The sorcerer gets better at things as his or her emotional investment gets more
intense. The sorcerer’s skills get better when surrounded by strangers. The
sorcerer’s equipment thrives on new experiences. Sorcerers look their best at
parties.

Obviously these are just examples, but they build character classes in a
direction that creates cool and interesting niches and ties characters to the
situations in which they find themselves, which I think is much more important
than making sure the party’s meat shield is sticky enough to pull aggro.

Kill all of the classes in D&D. Build them up from scratch. Look at what
they’re good at, look at where and how they want to be good at it, and find ways
to represent those preferences mechanically, and you’ll end up with characters
that are much, much cooler in the long run.

Obvioulsy, all of this is just my opinion (and, to some extent, Friend
Ian’s). But by sanding the rust off the chassis and rebuilding the transmission,
D&D might have a lot of life left in her. Rather than looking at ways we can
redesign the Mustang, why don’t we see if we can make this one pretty
again?

Thursday, July 05, 2012

I saw this on Youtube and thought it was pretty great. Marcelo Figueroa is a veteran of the Edition Wars, an AEG alum and knows what he's talking about. It was an enlightening talk (even if I'm sort of late to the game, seeing it some three years late), and it hopefully has something in it that will appeal to you.

Also, as an industry professional who is looking to further his career in sales, marketing and management, if someone in the know could fill me in on the Weasel List and Gamer High - assuming these institutions still exist - that would be great.